Come and set a spell on the porch steps 'n catch your breath

Douglas Kiker

It all started with a wild canary.For what reporter Mac McFarland had thought was a rare Spinus Tristus bird turned out to be a yellow Volkswagen, half-submerged in the water near the Cape Cod beach where presidential hopeful Dolph Bridges happened to be staying.That might have been the end of it. But when Mac sped to the water to check it out, he found the body of a beautiful young woman still pinned in the passenger seat by her seat belt.A tragedy, yes. But also a suspicious one. Who had been the driver? Why had the girl been abandoned? At first she appeared to be only a summertime waitress. But gradually Mac discovered that a great many important people knew her, including Senator Bridges himself, who apparently saw her as more than just a pretty face. You might say he knew her intimately in life – and maybe in death…

This is a second in a trilogy. Pretty fitting reading right now with the political aspect to the storyline! A good solid mystery in a nice setting. I like the main series characters and their interaction with each other. The plot was smoothly paced and the culprit a bit of a surprise. It was not who I was sure it was! If you come across Kiker’s books pick them up, you’ll enjoy them.

This book counts for Bev’s Vintage Scavenger Hunt, Silver. Fulfilling the square for Body of Water on the cover. That puts me at 7 for Silver!

At least that’s the way Mac McFarland felt. He hated the feisty little poodle almost as much a he hated the wife he’d just left. But there he was, sharing a rented, run-down house with his dog-in the middle of winter, in the middle of Cape Cod. No family, no job – just a burned-out, lonely reporter who used to be one of the best.Then MouMou found the body, lying in the snow near the back porch of the big house next door…It was Jane Drexel, very rich and very dead. Murdered, in fact. A detail McFarland learned when he called the police. And when he became a stringer for a Boston paper and was assigned to the case, he learned more – a lot more. Like the secret relationship Mrs. Drexel had with her trustees. Who really controlled the town? How did Mrs. Drexel handle her millions? And, last but not least, who killed Jane Drexel – and why…?’ From back cover

How right they are! It was a fun read, found myself chuckling many times and I can’t wait to see what McFarland is up to in the second book of this 3 book series! I’ve already ordered it on Paperbackswap!

This book was written in 1986 by Douglas Kiker, an American author and newspaper/television reporter. He was a reporter for the NBC Nightly News. If your interested you can see a short clip of him doing the news here. Too bad for us mystery lovers, he started writing late in life and died the same year the third Mac McFarland Mystery was published.

I wasn’t too impressed when the book first started out, but before I knew it I was hooked on McFarland and loving everything about it. The scraggly old dog, MouMou, the location, the towns people and the solid murder mystery to solve. Get a copy if you can!

“The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison.” ― C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism